Dear Parish Family,

We are pleased to offer our July 1, 2022 - June 30, 2023 financial report in this weekend's bulletin. We ended the year in a strong financial position, thanks largely to a successful "Faithfully United" parish stewardship campaign last Fall. Increasing our offertory each week translates directly into carrying out our mission to live our faith in Christ and to draw others into a relationship with Christ and His Church. Moreover, we provided $17,725 in the Angel Scholarship Fund tax credit program to make a Christ-centered Catholic education affordable for families who send their children to St. Mary School.

A few notable events happened at our parish this past fiscal year for which we can be grateful to our Lord. First of all, we said farewell in May to Fr. Steve Spisak who faithfully served us the past four years, and welcomed Fr. Fabian Han as a newly ordained priest in June. I was installed as the 31st pastor at St. Patrick's on Sunday, December 11. We created the shared staff positions of Communications Director, Facilities Manager, and Office Manager which we share with St. Mary's. We are grateful for the ministry of Diane in our parish office, and Deacon Bob and Deacon Phil who faithfully serve our community of faith. We participated in the 9 Nights of Night Prayer in Lent, and celebrated a fun St. Patrick's dinner in March!  We also had another successful Chinese Auction this past year. 

On the facilities end, we installed roof heating cables on the church, waterproofed the rectory basement, and refurbished our stained glass windows through the generosity of our Heart of a Shepherd campaign donors. We also purchased new hymnals for our church.

We continued to provide wonderful charitable outreach to those in need through our Stocking for Soldiers collection. Additionally this past year, we sent dozens of cards to health care workers, assisted four families through our Christmas Giving Tree,  gave away hundreds of hot dogs at the Fourth of July festivities in Thompson Square, and sponsored the King Kone truck one evening in the Square.

I'm grateful for all of you who make this wonderful work and outreach possible in our community. Let's continue to work together so that the life of Christ may be proclaimed, lived, and celebrated by all.

For the next few weekends, we will be publishing Fr. Jerry Bednar's four-part series on "Parents Matter" which reflects on crucial elements of Issue 1 on the November 7 ballot. Fr. Bednar has his law degree and is a wise and competent authority to reflect on how elements of the poorly drafted constitutional amendment will undermine parental rights to be involved in critical situations in their children's lives. I hope this material helps you and your family understand what's at stake in the upcoming election.

I am yours in Christ,
Fr. Scott Goodfellow